Have I Got a Story for You
by drufan
Summary: Just a conversation between Sheppard and McKay after the Siege. Complete. Characters aren't mine.


_A/N: This happens a day or two after Seige 3._

**Have I Got a Story for You…**

It had been a long day. Hell it had been a long week. Not just for me, but for all of us.

Questions kept popping up: Were we going to make it? Would there be the last minute rescue? Were we just spinning our wheels in the sand by just being here?

I was tired of questions. I was tired of the constant and unrelenting stress. I needed normal. I needed simple. I needed a sunset. I needed a beer.

So, I requisitioned myself a chair and sat down on one of the balconies facing the sunset. Some ingenious, saint of an individual on the Daedalus had smuggled beer. God love him or her.

Silence is golden as the theater says and, right now, it's down right beautiful. I had the chair against the outside wall of Atlantis so I could lean my head against it. I basked in the fading, Atlantean sunshine and I popped open a cold one. Nice.

"So this is where you're hiding?"

The man must be part bloodhound.

"Hey McKay, pull up a chair and enjoy the view." I gave that conciliatory smile and closed my eyes again.

I think he had finally gotten some sleep. He did not look as racoonish as he had earlier.

"I think I will." He disappeared. A few minutes later, he dragged a chair out and sat it next to mine.

"I didn't need a Wraith to touch me to make me age this week."

I give a mild, quiet, bitter laugh in response. "Me either."

He was silent for a while so I cracked an eye open. I saw him looking quite contemplative.

"Something on your mind McKay?" I offer a pull off the beer.

"When is there not?" He accepts the bottle takes a sip and looks out over the water. "Why do you think we always try to say something humorous at times of great duress?"

I was trying to escape questions. But this one I could answer. "That's easy. We'd go crazy if we didn't. If we did not have humor, we would all be sitting here twiddling our thumbs and beating our heads against the wall singing Barney songs."

"Do you think so?"

"Carson would not have enough straight jackets for all of us." Then a story an old buddy told me came to mind. "Case in point, buddy calls me up about six or seven years ago. _Hey Shep_…"

"Shep?" McKay snickered.

I ignore him; I can be mature at times.

_"Hey Shep, I'm a dad."_

"I met this buddy in basic training, kept me out of blanket parties. Kind of guy you want to have your back… So this gargoyle not only finds a wife, now he's propagating the species."

He hands me the beer back, "I, of course, say congrats. How's she doing? What's the sex? He discusses weight, length, hair- yada, yada, yada. I listen; I'm polite; and I'm genuinely excited. He's a good guy. We catch up a little. I tell him I'm being transferred to Eglin in a couple of weeks- blah, blah, blah."

"He finally says: _Have I got a story for you_."

McKay scowls, "Not a first diaper or birthing story is it?" I hand him back the beer. We are nursing the hell out of it. Nectar of the gods.

"No. This is almost theater of the absurd." I lean forward in my chair and look at him. "So he starts: _We are about three weeks away from the due date. Kate (his wife) is a bowling ball with legs. We get a notice that a package is waiting for us at the post office. It was too large to stick in the mail box for our apartment and apparently could not just be left at the door_."

_"So Kate and I are thinking, must be for the baby. Neither one of us has a chance to get down to the post office for a week. So it sits and waits."_

Sheppard leans back in the chair, "This is where it gets absurd."

"Oh I can tell." He doesn't believe me; I can tell.

_"On my lunch break, I decide to make a pit stop at the post office. I have a car load of co-workers with me."_

"Wait, I thought he was in the military?"

"He did his four year stint and decided to do other things. Works for an investment firm I think."

"Oh, continue then." McKay gives a nod of his head.

"OK, so he's on his break and at the P. O. He says: _I pick up the package and open it right there in the post office. I go white as a sheet. I carry it gingerly out and get in to my car full of co-workers just a little dazed_."

_"A co-worker asks: What's in the box?"_

_"Grandma."_

_"Oh your grandmother sent you something for the baby?"_

_"No, it's my Grandma Hardin. It's her ashes."_

McKay spews my beer everywhere. What a waste.

I grin and nod, "That was my reaction except it was Diet Coke."

"His grandmother came to visit, so to speak?" McKay is out right laughing now.

"Well yeah, so to speak. But that is not all. I said theater of the absurd. So far I have only told you an amusing anecdote."

"So there's more?"

"Oh you betcha. OK so we have established in this ever increasingly, small car that Grandma is in the box. By the way, it is Thursday. Holy Thursday to be exact."

"So this happens right before Easter?"

"Yes. Alright, two or three weeks before the note, George's Grandma Hardin died. She and the family had been estranged. George was the only one who had contact with the nursing home. So on her death they called him and he told them to dispose of the body as they saw fit. He never expected her to show up with the bills and sales ads. With me so far?"

"Yeah."

"OK, so he has the box in the car and I'm betting no one is sitting real close to it. Where ever it is, there is a ring of safety. I mean, what is he going to do? Stick her in the trunk? After lunch he takes her back to his office, where she will remain until he can figure out what to do with her. She has a nice shelf in an unused office. What more could you ask for? Because he's certainly not about to bring a dead woman into his home with a baby on the way. Call it superstition, but that was not going to happen."

"He tells me: _That night Kate and I have our last Lamaze class. So I tell her the story_."

_"Picked up the package today."_

_"Oh what was it?"_

_"Grandma."_

_"A gift from your grandmother in Pennsylvania?"_

_"No, Grandma Hardin."_

"Kate apparently spit cranberry juice across the room and guffawed. The entire class is staring at them."

_"YOUR GRANDMOTHER WAS SENT THROUGH THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE!"_

_"Yes."_

"She guffawed again. He said she kept laughing through the rest of class." I grabbed the almost empty bottle and finished it off. "Mmmm. Backwash."

McKay just crinkled his nose.

"So now Good Friday rolls around and Kate receives a phone call from her brother."

_"Kate, Mimi's dead."_

"Now, her grandmother has died; so the family is meeting at the house. Kate is deservedly upset and George leaves work to go with her. Mimi, as the grandkids call her, died at home. So her body is still there when Kate waddles in with George in tow. The funeral home has been called and all the family is coming to say "good-bye." Tearful this, mournful that, people get hungry- pizza is ordered."

_"The morticians arrive and instruct us to exit the room. They tell us that we really don't want to see what they have to do to the body in order to move it. Everyone goes into the kitchen and chit chats. How are you? When are you due? Next Friday- looks of shock. Blah, blah, blah."_

_"Kate then says, I've got a story for you."_

_"She goes through receiving the note; George picking up the package; and the co-workers asking, What's in the box?"_

_"Grandma."_

_"A present from his grandmother? One cousin asks."_

_"No…Grandma…" Kate is laughing so hard she can hardly continue, "Her ashes."_

"George tells me the entire kitchen erupts into cackling. He could only guess what the morticians were thinking as they prepared the body for transport and hear hysterical laughter coming from the kitchen. After about 20 to 30 minutes, the mortician comes back and says they can come out. It is time for final good-byes."

_"We are all in the living room, reverent and solemn, when the pizza delivery guy chooses that time to pull up."_

_"Uh-oh, says one of her cousins."_

_"Now what is this guy going to think Shep, when the door to the house opens and there is a dead body in a bag in the living room? A mad scramble is on for cash and to meet the poor guy before he reaches the door. One cousin is leaping across furniture and another is gathering bills. The money is shoved into the track star's hand. She flies out the door and skids to an abrupt stop."_

_"How much? Thank you…Here's your pizza ma'am…Thank you."_

_"She casually walks back in with 5 pizza boxes right past her dead grandmother and the downright amused faces of the family. The pendulum swings back the other way once the pizza is in the kitchen. Mourning overtakes them once again and Kate's mother and aunts say good-bye to their mother. The rest of the family follows suit and Mimi is gently removed from her home for the last time."_

"The next day, Saturday, George becomes a member of his wife's faith."

_"Shep, we went from the absurd, to sorrow and to utter joy, all in three days while waiting for the birth of my son."_

"He said they went to the funeral with a suitcase in the trunk just in case junior decided to make an appearance. Bets were being taken if all the stress would trigger contractions."

"Did it?" McKay asked.

"No, little guy was a week late."

"And your point to this farce of a story?"

"I believe without the humorous, the absurd and down right funny, we would all be sticking our heads in the proverbial oven. We just need a reminder that keeps us grounded. And that is how we are going to face an enemy as terrifying as the Wraith, fully and defiantly."

I really do believe that. If we can't laugh, then we would be complete and total basket cases. Right now we are just partial basket cases wreaking havoc across the Pegasus Galaxy. We are that good kind of crazy.

McKay leaned his head back against the wall and soaked in the last rays of the sun.

"I see your point. Sooo…wanna hear a good joke?"

"Sure." We smile at each other, "I have a meeting with Col. Caldwell in a couple of hours, so I'm going to need a good laugh."

The End


End file.
